Search

Many people were involved in producing the seven volumes that make up the fourth series of the Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers. Included were about two hundred volunteers and about one hundred people working either on short-term contracts or carrying out piece work. At the Royal Society there was a small, largely female, secretariat working full-time. It included both clerical and bibliographic staff. Coordinating all the work was the chemist Herbert McLeod, appointed director of the catalogue in 1901. As is discussed, the position of director was created especially for him after his forced retirement from the Royal Indian Engineering College. The paper shows the complexity of the work involved in producing the catalogue, as well as something of the office culture at the Royal Society in the early twentieth century. The working conditions of the women employees, and prevailing attitudes toward the largely female clerical and bibliographic staff, are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scottish publisher and naturalist Robert Chambers pursued an amateur interest in geology through much of his life. His early measurements of raised beaches in Scotland earned him membership in the Geological Society of London in 1844, a recognition much appreciated by the anonymous author of the ‘scandalous’Vestigespublished the same year. Although familiar with emerging ice age theories, Chambers remained with most British geologists a sceptic through the 1840s, even after a trip to the glaciers of the Alps in 1848, which nevertheless prepared him for the turning point, which came in 1849 during an extensive field trip in Norway and Sweden. Here a wealth of observations left him in no doubt that vast glaciers had formerly covered Scandinavia, polishing cliffs, scouring striations, depositing old moraines and erratic boulders. This also led him to a new glacial reading of the British landscape, and with the ardent conviction of a fresh convert he became one of the most vocal supporters of glacial theory in Britain in the 1850s at a time when the iceberg drift theory for boulder transport was still favoured by most prominent British geologists. While Chambers through his popularChambers’s Edinburgh Journalcommunicated his travels and ice age vision to a wide audience, and also pointed out ice age evidence on guided excursions around Edinburgh, he did not enter this new vision into subsequent editions ofVestiges, probably in order not to reveal its author. This paper explores Chambers’s contributions to the ice age debate, his field trips and the genesis of his convictions, and evaluates his impact on the scientific debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raphael Meldola FRS (1849-1915) was professor of chemistry at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury. He was a colleague and close friend of Silvanus Phillips Thompson FRS (1851-1916), the college principal and professor of physics. This paper follows an earlier one on Thompson and the making of his career. It is intended to illustrate further the ways in which scientists of Meldola and Thompson's generation gained advancement within the scientific community. Meldola had interests beyond chemistry, including a serious interest in field entomology. In this he had several well-known mentors including Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. The paper, which includes much new information derived from archival work, is presented as six thematic narratives related, among other things, to chemical and technical education, dye chemistry, the Royal Society solar eclipse expedition of 1875, natural history and Darwinism, field clubs, learned societies, and the honouring of scientists. Together these narratives illustrate a generalist/voluntarist career pattern that came to an end with the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study that contributes to the current debate among historians of chemistry concerning the role and influence of pedagogy in science. Recently, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and her colleagues concluded that in nineteenth-century France, 'textbooks played an important role in discipline building and in creating theories'.1 Developing this idea further, this paper examines the dissemination of knowledge through face-to-face chemical lectures, showing that the influence of pedagogical strategy on theoretical content of the science is far from negligible. The pedagogy of William Cullen was essentially responsible for the prevalence of the doctrine of affinity in British chemistry from the 1760s onwards. Cullen used his affinity theory as a pedagogical tool that to a large extent defined his discipline, and the pedagogical pyramid that he headed similarly ensured that the doctrine would remain at the heart of British chemistry. From a pedagogical tool, the doctrine of affinity was transformed over time into a chemical tool, offering British chemists a disciplinary common ground that both set and reinforced the boundaries to their discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will consider the range of British participation in mathematics internationally during the nineteenth century through an analysis of British mathematical contributions to scientific journals outside of Britain. Viewing scientific papers contained in journals as significant indicators of research, we consider scientists who authored or read and responded in print to papers in a given area within a given group of journals to constitute a publication community. The extent of publication by British mathematicians in these journals can help characterize the role of foreign publication in nineteenth-century British mathematics. Moreover, the isolation of educational, societal, and personal circumstances which motivated British mathematicians to present their work to foreign journals highlights limited but concentrated groups of mathematicians committed to developing and strengthening international mathematical ties with Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the legacy of the great French experimental physicist Victor Regnault through the example of Gabriel Lippmann, whose engagement with electrical standardization during the early 1880s was guided by Regnault's methodological precept to measure ‘directly’. Lippmann's education reveals that the theoretical practice of ‘direct’ measurement entailed eliminating extraneous physical effects through the experimental design, rather than, like physicists in Britain and Germany, making numerical ‘corrections’ to measured values. It also provides, paradoxically, exemplars of the qualitative theoretical practices that sustained Regnault's misguided ambition to avoid theory. By considering the largely negative reactions to Lippmann's proposals for selecting suitable electrical units and methods of measuring the ohm, this paper associates these theoretical practices with the ineffectual rhetorical strategies employed by Lippmann to promote his work, and thereby indicates that the practice of direct measurement was limited to French experimental physics. Whilst this result aligns readily with the existence of divergent nineteenth century British and German cultures of precision, it emerges from a very different disciplinary context in which the practice of precision electrical measurement developed independently of submarine telegraphy. This is because, as this paper illustrates, telegraphic engineering and experimental physics remained separate professions in France. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The growing need for standardized units of measure led to major metrological reforms in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper focusses on their implementation in the Kingdom of Hanover and the involvement of C.F. Gauss. His papers reveal how much the success of his precision measurements hinged on the skill of his mechanic M. Meyerstein. A discussion of the regional weights and measures and the standardization procedure is followed by a description of various precision balances and the weighing methods employed as well as a review of the problems posed by reliable length calibration. The success of the enterprise rested not only on intellectual prestige and ministerial clout but also on the hands-on skill of the mechanical practitioner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconceptualizes Thomas Clifford Allbutt's contributions to the making of scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century England. Existing literature on Allbutt usually describes his achievements, such as his design of the pocket thermometer and his advocacy of the use of the ophthalmoscope in general medicine, as independent events; and his work on the development of comparative pathology is largely overlooked. In this paper I focus on this latter aspect. I examine Allbutt's books and addresses and claim that Allbutt argued for the centrality of comparative pathology in the advancement of medical knowledge. He held that diseases should be studied as biological phenomena and that medicine should be made a biological science. He also argued that comparative pathology should be based upon the idea of evolution, and its study should embrace other nineteenth-century sciences including neurology, embryology and bacteriology. Allbutt's writings reveal that his endorsement of comparative pathology (1880s to 1920s), his promotion of the use of the ophthalmoscope and the thermometer in clinical medicine (early 1870s), and his support of the hospital unit system (1910s to 1920s) were part of a single programme. All were grounded in his scientific vision of medicine which emphasized a research culture, a stringent nosological attitude and an integration of laboratory sciences and clinical medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent of overseas migration by British chemists over the period 1887-1971. Notwithstanding the 'brain drain' alarms of the 1960s, overseas employment was characteristic of some 19% of British chemists' careers throughout our period, though its nature changed considerably. Our study examines the overseas employment histories of four cohorts of members of the [Royal] Institute of Chemistry in the 'Chemists' Database' at the Open University. Those employed abroad were not only highly qualified but also both geographically mobile and occupationally versatile. Over the period, the pattern of chemists' migration was broadly similar to that of British migration trends more generally. Except in the interwar years, chemists' rate of migration was relatively constant. However, the length of time they spent abroad declined markedly over the period: long-term migration became less characteristic than short-term overseas employment for purposes of career development. From the late nineteenth century, British chemists staffed the Empire, but also found employment in the expanding US economy. After 1945, chemists' destinations shifted more markedly towards North America, including Canada, and later also to Europe. Our work thus provides a new perspective on the dynamics of scientists' migration and contributes to studies on the brain drain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the relationship between the food committees of the Royal Society and government during the First World War, concentrating on the period up to the resignation of Lord Devonport as first Food Controller. It argues that, in the context of a radical public science discourse emanating from some sections of the scientific community and greatly increased contacts between scientists and government, the food scientists of the committees were moved to press for a formalization of the committees' role in food policy. The members constantly manoeuvred to achieve this aim, but also used a network of alternative channels into the heart of the policy process to get their findings translated into hard policy. In doing so, they explicitly rehearsed characteristic 'public science' arguments. In the institutional blur of wartime state-science relations, scientists often got close to the policy-making process. Post-War, the state swiftly moved to clarify the position: science was to be given more money, but was to be specifically blocked by new administrative arrangements embodied in the Haldane Report on the Machinery of Government from having any say in the core areas of general policy, the expert domain of the generalist policy-maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconceptualizes Thomas Clifford Allbutt's contributions to the making of scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century England. Existing literature on Allbutt usually describes his achievements, such as his design of the pocket thermometer and his advocacy of the use of the ophthalmoscope in general medicine, as independent events; and his work on the development of comparative pathology is largely overlooked. In this paper I focus on this latter aspect. I examine Allbutt's books and addresses and claim that Allbutt argued for the centrality of comparative pathology in the advancement of medical knowledge. He held that diseases should be studied as biological phenomena and that medicine should be made a biological science. He also argued that comparative pathology should be based upon the idea of evolution, and its study should embrace other nineteenth-century sciences including neurology, embryology and bacteriology. Allbutt's writings reveal that his endorsement of comparative pathology (1880s to 1920s), his promotion of the use of the ophthalmoscope and the thermometer in clinical medicine (early 1870s), and his support of the hospital unit system (1910s to 1920s) were part of a single programme. All were grounded in his scientific vision of medicine which emphasized a research culture, a stringent nosological attitude and an integration of laboratory sciences and clinical medicine. (Contains 110 footnotes.)

Between the 1860s and the 1910s, British acoustics was transformed from an area of empirical research into a mathematically organized field. Musical motives - improving musical scales and temperaments, making better musical instruments, and understanding the nature of musical tones - were among the major driving forces of acoustical researchers in nineteenth-century Britain. The German acoustician, Helmholtz, had a major impact on British acousticians who also had extensive interactions with American and French acousticians. Rayleigh's acoustics, reflecting all these features, bore remarkable fruit in his treatise The Theory of Sound, which successfully subjected empirical acoustics to analytical mathematics. His accomplishments made British acoustics a subfield of physics, thus distinguishing it from the 'new acoustics' in early twentieth-century America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Important shifts took place in the areas investigated by British experimental philosophers during the late eighteenth century. In particular, the phenomena of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism shifted from largely qualitative, non-mathematical subjects to increasingly quantitative, mathematically based subjects. Emphasizing the Scottish context of Edinburgh natural philosopher, John Robison, this paper traces developments in magnetic theory in Britain from the latter quarter of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Robison is an important transitional figure who practiced a new style of experimental philosophy, which eventually emerged as 'physics' in the nineteenth century. In particular, Robison's works presented and disseminated the one-fluid magnetic theory of Franz Aepinus among British experimental philosophers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Since the Great War began’, Professor David Orme Masson told a Melbourne audience in September 1915, ‘two statements have been made, and so frequently repeated that today they are commonplace. The first is that the result … depends on … men and more men, munitions and yet more munitions. The second is that this is a war of chemists and engineers—a war of applied science’. To Britain's assistance in this war of invention and applied science came more than 120 Australian scientists, whose particular technical skills were urgently needed by the expanding munitions industries. However, their contribution to the Imperial cause and to Allied victory has been overshadowed by the heroism of ANZAC troops in Gallipoli and in France. This paper begins the task of assessing the importance of their work for Britain, and the significance of their wartime experiences for post-war Australia, as viewed through the lives of the men and their organizing genius, A. E. Leighton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the surprising resurgence in the fortunes of the British eugenics movement in the 1930s. It is argued that although mass unemployment may in the long run have discredited that version of eugenics in which social dependence and destitution were attributed to genetic defect, in the short run the Depression was often perceived as a vindication of the eugenical creed In particular, the attempt to reduce the fertility of the unemployed by popularising birth control techniques, and the voluntary sterilization campaign aimed at preventing the propagation of defectives from the so-called Social Problem Group, satisfied the urge felt by many conservative members from the professional classes to respond creatively to the country's crisis, without endangering existing social and economic institutions. It is also shown that not until 1938 did events in Germany cause substantial damage to the cause of eugenics in Britain. In fact. the 'German experiment' was actually greeted with approval by certain British eugenists of an authoritarian cast of mind. However, the Society as a whole never identified with these right-wing extremists, thanks in part to the moderating influence exercised by its General Secretary, Dr. C.P. Blacker whose prime concern was with psycho-medical problems likely to concern p`ople of all party persuasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of ideas about narcotic addiction. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, addiction was not viewed as a medical condition, but as a 'bad habit'. The contemporary reaction to De Quincey's Confessions (1821) demonstrates the general lack of medical involvement. The question of opium eating and longevity, first generated by the Mar case, brought increased medical interest and an embryo connection with the anti-opium crusade. In the second half of the century, addiction was more fully 'medicalised' through the profession's involvement in the question of hypodermic morphine and the allied development of a disease theory of addiction. The 'problem' of hypodermic morphine owed much to medical perceptions; and the disease theory, too, was not scientifically autonomous. Medical thinking developed in close alliance with moral biases, temperance and anti-opium beliefs. Treatment structures and methods were elaborated in line with increased medical interest. In the early twentieth century there was a distinct move on the part of the government, and the Home Office in particular, to defeat the 'disease' view, and to substitute a penal policy. The 1926 Rolleston Report marked not simply a reassertion of the earlier moral-cum-medical emphasis, but a recognition of partnership between doctors and the state in which the limited nature of narcotic addiction at first ensured a liberal reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts a critical examination of the thesis that an apprenticeship to a Lancaster druggist was, for Edward Frankland, a wholly inappropriate preparation for a career in chemistry. This view, which stems directly from Frankland himself, is defective in several ways. It fails to take into account certain benefits which he accepted as valuable; it implies an exceptional degree of 'negligence' which was in fact quite typical; it ignores certain positive indicators of the value of such experience; and it involves questionable value-judgments on the behaviour of one individual, the druggist Stephen Ross. Although Frankland's perspective may be no longer acceptable, the reasons for its inadequacy are perhaps the most important aspect of the whole affair. Their identification raises questions of historiography of wider significance, while the whole episode underlines certain issues in scientific training that were to become crucial in the growth of Victorian chemistry in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the theoretical issues of the history of the Archaean Controversy in Great Britain. Problems in the stratigraphical work in rocks; Concerns on the doctrine of uniformitarianism; Nature of metamorphism.

Focuses on the difficulty experienced by the geologists working in unfossiliferous rocks in Great Britain. Research on the formation of metamorphic rocks; Derivation of tectonic ideas; Factions and competing interests of the geologists.

Focuses on the importance of basic industrial research in mediating the controversies between practical engineering and science in Great Britain. Principles on the components of electrical circuit; Symmetry between the electric and magnetic fields; Electric resistance of the equation.

Focuses on the controversy surrounding the Archean model in Great Britain. Debate between professionals of the Geological Survey and the Archean fraternity; Arguments concerning the relative ages of the Uriconian and Longmyndian rocks; Problems of stratigraphical work in unfossiliferous rocks.

One of the central debates among British chemists during the 1830s concerned the use of symbols to represent elements and compounds. Chemists such as Edward Turner, who desired to use symbolic notation mainly for practical reasons, eventually succeeded in fending off metaphysical objections to their approach. These objections were voiced both by the philosopher William Whewell, who wished to subordinate the chemists' practical aims to the rigid standard of algebra, and by John Dalton, whose hidebound opposition to abbreviated notation symbolized the suspicion with which older British chemists perceived continental innovations. It is argued that the success of chemists like Turner in this debate reflects their larger success in the 1830s in achieving disciplinary autonomy and in beginning to align themselves more closely with prevailing chemical practice across the Channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the social, cultural and political beliefs of Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society secretary and treasurer Thomas Wilson in Great Britain. Citation of family and educational background; Stand on the role of legislation in producing social improvement; Difficulty of the group in implementing utilitarian and economically motivated programs.

Details the millstone survey conducted by geologist John MacCulloch in West Great Britain and its consequences. Authorization of the search by the Board of Ordnance; Places discovered to have suitable limestones; Reputation established by MacCulloch in the field of geology.

Examines the British oil interest in the Middle East in 1920 to 1970. Emergence of modern petroleum industry; Impact of World War II to the oil industry in Europe; Accounts of oil exploration in Middle East.

Focuses on the conflict between science and religion following the introduction anaesthesia into surgery in Great Britain. Resistance of the use of obstetrics; Employment of anaesthesia during labor; Amount of material pain and agony during the surgery.

This paper is both (a) an exercise in historical recovery in that it details some of the events surrounding the founding of the City and Guilds of London Institute and describes the way in which the Institute set about the building and running of two of its colleges, the City and Guilds Technical College, Finsbury, and the Central Institution in South Kensington (new archival detail is added to what is already known of this history) and (b) an attempt to interpret the above material in terms of various forms of association within the City Corporation and the guilds. Collectively the City and the guilds made an effort to come to terms with a modernizing world through the means of providing scientific and technical education. The guilds wanted to remain important even though traditional apprenticeship was dying out. In joining in a new venture to provide technical education for young people it was necessary to maintain an order in which the City's presence was clear and apparent. This paper will show how such an order was achieved and, in so doing, it shows something more generally of the relationship of tradition and rhetoric to institution building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Locke intervened in two major debates in which the issue of species featured: (1) the question of whether species designations are based on real essences or only nominal essences (discussed in theEssay), and (2) the debate over the recoinage of English currency in the 1690s, in which Locke argued for a restoration of silver depleted by widescale clipping (discussed in his economic writings published between 1692–95). This article investigates Locke's position on the recoinage and considers alternative proposals in the period, including those which advocated the introduction of a ‘new species’ of money in the form of credit, based on land. Locke opened the space, philosophically, for innovations in defining money, but endorsed a narrower conception of money as silver by weight alone (not by its stamp or denomination). His rationale for doing so exposes his attachment to shared systems of measurement, intersubjective agreement and ways of stabilizing meaning by reference to external criteria (in this case, the weight of silver, a measure that functioned internationally). This suggests a pattern of attempting to constrain the nominalism that his system otherwise foregrounded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contrary to previous views of an acute shortage of chemists at the beginning of the twentieth century, this study found that the number of chemists identifiable by name in the Manchester area was substantial, even in 1902. Moreover, the majority were qualified to some extent. The total number of chemists and their degree of formal qualification increased rapidly during the period 1902-36. Employment data demonstrate that they worked not only in the chemical industry, but in a wide range of manufacturing industry and commerce. Only a relatively small proportion was employed in education. Research chemists were active in the area in the late nineteenth century: by 1936, 28% of Manchester chemists recorded their job title as research chemist or research manager. If Manchester were typical of Britain as a whole the number of chemists employed in 1902 would greatly exceed previous estimates. More speculatively, the number of chemists in Britain in 1902 may even have been comparable to that in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The occasional (and belated) concern of the British Government with science in the nineteenth century is a matter of potential interest to historians of science, yet many previous studies have tended to range over a variety of different aspects of the question. There have been too many vague allusions to financial support as 'money for science' in general. It is time that particular parts of the problem were unpacked. For example, the award of money (from the 1820s) to pay a few people of independent means for apparatus was quite distinct from the provision (from the 1830s) of an occasional pension. Even then, to speak of 'pensions' uncovers unfortunate ambiguities. For too long science in Britain was regarded as no more than a private hobby for the well-to-do. As late as 1856 an official government statement seemed to make this attitude official. The English attitude to pensions differed remarkably from the French, who established a precedent in the reward of savants, sometimes quoted enviously by British men of science. In 1837 Robert Peel virtually admitted that, in awarding pensions to 'cultivators of science', he was following the French practice. It may also be useful to emphasise the contrast between the English (often led by Cambridge professors) and the Scots, mostly from Edinburgh, mainly represented here by Whewell and Brewster, respectively. Babbage had a different role in this story from that usually told. A large part in supporting men of science of modest means could have been played by the British Association for the Advancement of Science but it consistently refused to do so, although it supported an elite among its own members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin Moore (1867-1922), physiologist and biochemist, was an eminent member of the British scientific and medical community in the early twentieth century. As a founder and president of the State Medical Services Association (SMSA) from its establishment in 1912 until his untimely death in 1922, Moore was a prominent medical services activist and planner in a period of intense debate on health services reform. As a medical scientist, Moore was also a participant in the campaign by laboratory scientists to obtain a larger role in clinical education, research, and medicine in this period. This article examines the medical services activism and ideas of Benjamin Moore. In particular, it seeks to demonstrate how his health services proposals and those he influenced, including SMSA and Labour Party plans, sought to advance the interests of laboratory scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of a technical frontier in branches of experimental measurement, such as the resolution of the microscope, angular measure and time telling, has been around for more than 60 years. The purpose of this brief paper is to identify the technical frontier operating on the achromatic astronomical telescope, where a limiting factor of the resolution of fine detail was the quality of the optical glass available. The achromatically corrected objective is formed from two kinds of glass, the common crown glass and the heavy clear flint glass or lead glass. This last was difficult to make homogeneous, that is without regions of different density, and therefore different refraction and dispersion. Unusually, optical glass had to pass a second frontier, this time placed on the whole glass industry by the English Government in the form of excise duty, administered with a bureaucratic efficiency that effectively stopped, in around 1800, the making of optical glass suitable for the serious astronomical telescopes. The result of the tax imposition was to delay the English production of improved optical glass for more than 80 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 30 years ago in Annals of Science, Dr. Eric Forbes of the University of Edinburgh published the correspondence between Carl Gauss and Great Britain's Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne. Five of the letters he listed as missing have now been discovered, along with two entirely new letters he was unaware of. Their nearly complete correspondence can now be read for the first time in 200 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of British and French weights exchanged between the Royal Society and the Académie royale des sciences in the 1730s has led to a re-assessment of the Elizabethan troy standards from the Exchequer and the suggestion that the mass of the troy pound has been revised upwards. In turn this is used to support the idea of an evolutionary relationship between the early bullion ounces of England, France, and the Low Countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enforcement of the alkali acts by the chief inspectors Robert Angus Smith (1817-84) and Alfred Evans Fletcher (1827-1920) indicates how scientific ideals of neutrality and impartiality were placed under strain by their state-sanctioned role as arbitrators between environmental and industrial interests. Previously unused or unexploited sources reveal the precise ways in which they sought to resolve the conflicts between 'muck and brass' intrinsic to environmental regulation and illustrate the value-laden and discretionary implementation of scientific public policy. Through an analysis of the ethical considerations and decision-making strategies of the first chief alkali inspectors this study highlights the social negotiation of regulatory science and shows the extent to which the cultural values of actors can shape the implementation of technical policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates an essay on mathematicians, historians and physicist Isaac Newton's principia in Great Britain. List of contributors to the development of Newtonian calculus in Great Britain; Main themes of the principia; Accounts of Niccolo Guicciardini on the development of principia.

Two documents written in his youth by the distinguished nineteenth-century British geologist Archibald Geikie have recently become available to historians. One is Geikie's 'Journal', written when he had recently been appointed to the Scottish Branch of the Geological Survey, the other is an essay 'On the Study of the Sciences', which is published here in full. The essay gives an indication of Geikie's early views on science and his thoughts about education. The 'Journal' reveals much about Geikie's youth personal fears and goals, and his religious views. It appears that he was filled with religious zeal and piety when a young man, though as far as the evidence goes, this gave way to conventional religious observance in later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the link between early modern geography and science in Great Britain. Discussion of the writings of Sir Robert Sibbald; Promotion of geographical knowledge; Acknowledgement of social and political contexts; History of science.

Examines the reason on the high participation of women in eugenics movement in Great Britain. Relationship between genetical science development and eugenics movement; Role of Mary Scharlieb, Elizabeth Sloan and Stella Browne on eugenics movement; Debate on degeneration and racial progress.

Describes the development of agricultural science from 1850-1914 in Great Britain. Explanation on the failure before 1890; Role of Development Commission on promoting agricultural research; Impact of quality control technique development on increasing public confidence.

Focuses on the medical concerns on the study of micro-organisms during the twentieth century in Great Britain. Involvement of microbes in industrial context; Development of the fermentation processes; Promotion of the role of microbes in the industry.

Investigates the impact of war on civilian chemists in Great Britain. Mobilization of chemists; Transformations in the chemical industry; Changes in academic-government relations in research.

Focuses on the British Society for the History of Mathematics in Great Britain. Launch of the society under unusual circumstances; Practice of holding principal meetings; Interest of founders on the use of history in mathematical education.

Focuses on the role of engineers as military spies in Great Britain. Visits of the French engineers in the British Isles; Disclosure of report on the foreign relations between France and England; Participation of both countries in the American War of Independence.

Focuses on the contributions of W.T. Astbury and Rosie Franklin to the study of science in Great Britain. Role of Astbury in X-ray study of DNA; Details on his Medical Research Council grant application; Involvement of Rosie Franklin.

Examines the record of the office of ordnance and the instrument-making trade in the mid-eighteenth century in Great Britain. Examination of the total number of instrument maker's bills; Detailed entries in the Bill Books; Inclusion of bills for instruments purchased by the Office of the Ordnance for the Royal Observatory in the records.

Assesses the Jesuit contribution to science and technical education in Great Britain. Examination of the Jesuit curriculum; Influence of Father John Gerard on the Jesuit type of education; Leadership qualities of Father Terence Donnelly.

Focuses on the contributions of John Pell to mathematics education in the Netherlands. Refutation on the quadrature of mathematician Longomontanus; Information sources of the refutation; Mathematical contents of the refutation.

Investigates the role played by scientists in opposing nuclear weapons policy in Great Britain. Attempts of scientific opinion to organize public opposition to nuclear weapons; Consequences of a nuclear arm strategy on the country; Factors significant in the anti-nuclear movement.